Submersed in their work

Monday

PORTSMOUTH, R.I. — When Patrick Donovan and two friends opened Meridian Ocean Services two years ago, they didn’t realize the business would take them around the world.

They started with a submersible about the size of a football, called a VideoRay, that could take standard-definition pictures and video in up to 1,000 feet of water. Now the Portsmouth-based company has a fleet of half a dozen high-level pieces of equipment to perform a variety of tasks at five times that depth.

The only company of its kind in the state, Meridian Ocean Services has jobs lined up across the globe in locales including the Gulf of Mexico, Seattle, Trinidad and the Mediterranean Sea, Donovan said.

Never knowing what they might find when one of their submersibles goes into the Deep Blue is part of what makes the job so much fun, he said.

“We know more about what’s going on in outer space than on our own planet,” Donovan said. “So much of the surface of our home is covered by water and the ocean controls what happens here on Earth from our weather to our trade routes.”

A chance meeting a couple years ago between Donovan, a Newport resident, and Nathaniel Spencer of Jamestown on a dock in Stamford, Conn., got the two longtime friends talking about how they’d like to get more involved in the underwater services field.

They teamed up with Blake Nolan of Annapolis, Md., to form Meridian Ocean Services, first out of Donovan’s garage and then in downtown Newport. The firm relocated recently to the Melville boat basin off Stringham Road in Portsmouth. Meridian also has offices in Houston; Lafayette, La; Pensacola, Fla.; and Nassau, Bahamas.

Diving feet first into the business, Donovan said, the company did a number of smaller jobs with the VideoRay, examining bulkheads and other objects underwater to get experience.

Donovan said Meridian Ocean Services got its first big break around four months after launching. As part of that job, he said, they were contracted to do a survey in the Gulf of Mexico of more than 60 artificial reefs created out of outdated oil rigs and a scuttled vessel.

That work pushed the VideoRay to its limits, Donovan said, but it was fascinating and opened the gates to a number of other projects, both in industry and academia.

Today, Donovan said, besides the major industry-level companies, there are only two or three smaller firms like Meridian Ocean Services in the United States.

Meridian’s equipment can also cut or clamp objects at depths of up to 5,000 feet, and perform powerwashing, pipe laying and other difficult underwater work.

None of the submersibles operated by Meridian are manned. However, Donovan said, its cameras often work in conjunction with dive teams, offering a detailed look at what’s happening underwater to viewers on the surface.

“I grew up with Bob Ballard going to the Titanic and the underwater National Geographic specials,” Donovan said. “I was glued to the TV whenever something like that was on and now it feels like I’m living that same dream.”

Donovan said Meridian Ocean Services ships its equipment in specialized containers wherever it’s needed, around the planet. Once it arrives, Donovan said, a container set up to serve as a command center can be welded to the deck of a ship and the Meridian team can get to work from there.

No matter what the location, Donovan said working underwater is always more difficult than on land.

And when you’re using equipment like the VideoRay that costs $50,000 for a base model without high-definition cameras and other add-ons, Donovan said costs go up, too.

In case any of the equipment like the VideoRay gets separated from its tether, each piece is outfitted with a homing beacon so it can be tracked down later. That hasn’t happened yet, but it’s a good feature to have as a backup, he said.

“Depending on the services you’re offering, there are any number of things you have to think about,” Donovan said. “Pressure, depth, currents. It’s a lot different than working on the surface and anything you do is far more intensive than on solid ground and with that, the costs go up, your liability goes up, everything goes up.”

Last December, Donovan said, Meridian Ocean Services went to Otter Lake in Saskatchewan, Canada, to help search for a Canadian First Nations elder whose snowmobile fell through the ice. Unable to locate the man during the first visit, a team returned recently and located the body using two ROVs in an area where the temperature was 40 degrees below zero.

Asked what environment he’d like to work in that he hasn’t yet, Donovan said Antarctica, not only because of its isolation but also its beauty.

“Every now and then, especially when things get quiet, I’ll sit back and think about where we’ve been, especially since it was only a couple years ago,” Donovan said. “It’s been quite a ride.”

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